President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Homeland Security Department breezed through a confirmation hearing on Thursday that one senator called a “warm and fuzzy” experience.

The nominee, Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, offered few specifics at the two-and-one-half-hour hearing, while promising to safeguard the country from terrorists, protect its borders and strengthen the six-year-old department.

Ms. Napolitano told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that the department had moved to shape itself into a cohesive agency created from more than 22 parts. But, she said, “our work is not finished.”

“To secure the homeland,” she said, “means to protect our nation’s borders by finding and killing roots of terrorism and stop those who intend to hurt us, to wisely enforce the rule of law at our borders, to protect our national cyber infrastructure, and to prepare for and respond to natural and man-caused disasters with speed, skill and effectiveness.”

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Janet NapolitanoCredit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who heads the committee, praised Ms. Napolitano as a “superb choice.” Although the agency’s performance had improved, Mr. Lieberman said, “there were still those who believed D.H.S. should be chopped up and its parts shipped off to other agencies.”

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Her genial bipartisan welcome began with her introduction, as a Democrat, by Arizona’s two Republican senators, Jon Kyl and John McCain. Mr. McCain said Ms. Napolitano would bring her “no nonsense” approach as governor to the Obama cabinet.

But it was Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, who seemed to capture the hearing’s mood when she told Ms. Napolitano, “It’s all going to be warm and fuzzy today,” although she warned that after Ms. Napolitano’s widely expected confirmation there would be few such moments.

Ms. Napolitano, responding to several border and immigration questions, suggested that she was well equipped to handle complex and hotly debated issues through long experience as a governor and a former United States attorney in a border state. DAVID JOHNSTON